HEAVY METAL THRASHING AT FORUM

“Let’s get dirty,” singer Brian Johnson suggested midway through heavy metal kingpin AC/DC’s return to the Forum on Friday--as everyone wondered, what does he mean, get ? Certain factions would like to make a Satan connection since all the Night Stalker business, but AC/DC continues to sing not about hell, but about the “Highway to Hell”--substance abuse and (especially) indiscriminate sex. These guys are far too libidinously minded to devote much time to a higher--or lower--power.

Lead guitarist Angus Young’s predictable mooning routine aside, the show was rather tame by genre standards. Young still thrashes his cranium in a way that would have any normal human hemorrhaging in five minutes, and Johnson still sings/gargles in a way that has you clutching your own throat in terror, but the highlights all date back five years or more.

Guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, the current darling of the dexterity-for-dexterity’s-sake set, opened the show by playing lots of notes behind his head, behind his back, under his leg, against the monitor . . . Are you impressed yet? Both acts will be at the Pacific Amphitheatre tonight.